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Outside the Westlands...
Middle-Earth was a huge continent and while we are reasonably well informed about it's small northwesternmost Subcontinent, we only have snippets on the lands of the Northern Waste, Harad or Rhûn the Great.This is intended to be a collection of thoughts and criticism on common misconceptions when it comes to sub-creation outside the known Westlands. A carbon-copy of the Northwest A common trap many sub-creators seem to find hard to avoid is to take a small region, somewhere in Middle-Earth and to reproduce pretty much everything what we know from the Westlands.We have our Elves, our Dwarves, our Orcs and Trolls, maybe Giants and Dragons and we have our one realm of good-men, like our local gondor, and our local evil empire, like our local Mordor.Only maybe this time we paint everything as east asian, sub-saharan, near eastern, oriental or Eru knows what.Sometimes Authors even incorporated their version of the Drúedain -though most still shy away from incorporating some local exotic variant of Hobbits.In a way this is the most harmless mistake, and one of those most easily to forgive, since the Westlands pretty much are the Middle-Earth we all know and love.Yet there are some problems now: *We know we have Elves in the Westlands, but do we know we have Elves in the South?well we know there are the Avari, possibly somewhere in the east, but these are supposedly few and reclusive. *We know we Have Dwarves in the Northwest.Again -we know we have four clans of dwarves somewhere in the east, possibly two in the Orocarni and two others halfway between them and the Westlands.Again we don't know anything about dwarves in the South... *We actually DO know there were other, wild Halfling tribes, somewhere in the North, we believe the Hobbits, like other men, have their origin in Hildorien.Yet Hobbits are a typical phenomenon of the Westlands and even here they are a curiosity.Nobody except their closeset neighbours seems to even know of them. *Orcs and Trolls -we know they exist in the Westlands, and supposedly they did in the East.Again, we do not know anything on such creatures in the south -this doesn't rule out anything of course I'm just saying... if there are any one must give a good reason and some internal history for this! *Giants and Dragons are almost a world-wide phenomenon.Yet , even in the Westlands both are implied to be rare and strange.Smaug was said to have been the last great dragon.If there were any dragons in the faraway lands, these ought to be lesser, and still rare. *The Drúedain are a kind of enigma.They are reminiscent of the wild woodmen of european myth, yet they are some sort of stone-age, prehistoric human culture or even some sort of Pygmy-folk.It is tempting to use them as a temlate for local pygmy-like cultures, and indeed there are hints that at least some of the Druedain came from the east and moved to the south.Yet still one has to be very careful with them.They are a rare, dying race, they have their own clouded history with the orcs, and again: even in the westlands they are reclusive and widely unknown. *The Good Empire :In the Westlands we have... Gondor... and little else.Lindon is just a shadow of it's former glory and possibly largely empty, besides Gondor we only have small realms like Rohan, Dale... few others.And even Gondor is waning.It should be very strange if now just somewhere in the wild lands east or south we had a powerful realm of the free peoples! Of course there were some rebels, we know the Blue Wizards and even Saruman did so e undercover work here and there... but it would be a weird surprise if any of their rebel factions could even by far come up with anything comparable to gondor.If in the Westlands, freedom and civilization are in the great Realm and darkness and evil lure in the wilderness, then in the East and south it's possibly just the other way around.Sauron holds the big realms and civilization and the few rebels we have exist somewhere reclusive in the wilderness! *The evil Empire: a common trope is, somewhere still some good realm exists, like an island of resistance against the Dark Lord.Unfortunately little in the books speaks for such a possibility at all! Sauron pretty much owns all the rest of middle-Earth.He owns the local kings , he has his dark idol-worshiping Cult everywhere.He has won.And if we see the Easterlings and Haradrim we see pretty much, quite normal, civilized men, they don't appear very savage or dark,or cruel.Possibly great parts of Sauron's dominion are to it's inhabitants quite peaceful and civilized-they think they're the good guys, Gondor and the Elves are the evil guys in their minds! Eternal realms and most powerful Empires A common phenomenon is that authors of subcreation tend to imagine Middle-Earth outside the Westlands as quite Static in terms of realms, dynasties, population.In a way this may be understandable, are there after all, lands under the Shadow where Sauron's supposed rule is consolidated and safe.On the Other hand JRRT portraits pretty much all human cultures aside of the Númenóreans as pretty shortlived.Even the Edain pretty much existed, at last in the way and under the names we know them, only for close to 300 years!Rohan? A pretty young realm, only 500 years old during the times of the War of the ring.The Beornings and Bardings? Only 78 years old! Of course there have been predecessor cultures... but this is exactly the point! These tribes had different names, to some extend different culture, and often a completely different territory! The Eotheod? Existed for a maximum of 683 years! Vidugavia's kingdom? Survived only 608 years! Dale? Was only 180 years old when it was destroyed. So the realms of the "lesser men" are pretty much more subdue to changes than elvish realms such as Lórien, Lindon or even the Woodland realm, and far more shortlived and changing than the Dúnadan Kingdoms. We have all evidence that this was also true for the Easterlings.The Balchoth pretty much existed only for 447 years, 660 years at maximum if we count their descendants who invaded Rohan 2oo years later.The Wainriders? We do not know when exactly they entered history, they seem to have evolved after Narmacil II ascend to the throne and disappered into oblivion after 1944, existing only 94 years in the official chronicles of the West.The Easterlings who had come before existed between the 5th and the 14th century TA, but we do not know if these were one single uniformed nation or a number of changing tribes, alliances or dynasties.At last the land of Khand existed under this very name for at last 1075 years, though the Variags , under this name, are not named per se until the Time of the War of the Ring. Little do we know about the Haradrim, their entire organisation is alien to us, but even the realm of Umbar sees at least four dynasties and cultures during the ages.After the Fall of Númenór it is a Black Númenórean State for 627 years, after that it becomes part of Gondor for 505 Years and after that a Rebel-dynastie for 407 years.During the War of the Ring it had already been a Haradrim state for 1165 years, though we do not know if under the rule of one single people, trine or dynasty. And this precicely seems to be the Point: instead of powerful empires like Gondor or Arnor, eternal Realms whose royal lines reign for 3000 years or even 5000 years, we should see the "lesser men" as waves of changing kingdoms, tribal alliances, confederacies, dynasties.Named after famous rulers or culture heroes, maybe even territories, but seldom static and usually changing name and identity after ca. 500 years (or 100 - 1000 years).Also their territory always looks to have been quite limited. After all even Angmar only existed for 675 years.After it had served it's purpose the Dark Lord had little interest in upholding a functional realm there, though after it's fall wild tribes may have continued to exist (at least Orc-tribes seemingly did). Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits The Númenóreans Religion Sindarin and Quenya It is a common cliché to model Placenames and names of countries outside the Westlands after the known examples, which are commonly Sindarin.Or even to use Quenya or Quenya-Sindarin mixed-forms. However even in the Westlands many of this sort of Placenames were purely scholary names or names out of History, not used by their inhabitants themselves.The Rohirrim did for example not call themselves Rohirrim or their land Rohan, rather they used their own indigenous terms "Riddermark" or "Eorlingas".Also the Hobbits did not use Sindarin but their native Westron and it is known that the Bardings, Beornings, Dunlendings all used their own languages and not the Sindarin used by Dúnadan or Eldarin Loremasters. Likewise the Black Númenóreans did not call themselves "Black Númenóreans" and the Easterlings did not call themselves "Easterlings", "Wainriders" or "Balchoth" or the Haradrim did not call themselves "Haradrim".Again two of the only known examples for most likely indigenous names we got are "Khand" and "Variags", and it is to be presumed that other Easterling and Southron peoples used their own indigenous names as well. Now we still have a few Tolkien-names for lands of peoples outside the Westlands... Harwan, Barangil, Salkinóre, Amrûn, Andesalke, Bablon, Ninvi, Eastern Deserts, Eastern Lands, Red Sea, Orocarni, Turqeler, Ormal, Illuin, Ringil, Ringli, Helcar, Hildorien, Murmenalda, Cuivienen, Palisor, Wind Mountains, Grey Mountains, Yellow Mountains, Iron Mountains, Utumno, Dark Forests of the South, Southern Heat, Northern Heath, Sunlands, Northern Needle Woods, Wild Woods, Last Desert, Sahóra, Oronto... However most of these names are either discarded ones, old names out of the history or myths of the west or general, undefined for unknown semi-mythical, strange lands.They're certainly not indigenous terms. Even if they represent translated forms , these are not names of forms which would be used by the indigenous tribes themselves or maybe would not even been known to them. It would be rational to think of indigenous names and conlangs for the wild peoples east and South or at last use Avarin , orcish, black speech or Adûnaic forms where these languages could logically have been in use or may have had some impact on local toponymy. Tolkien himself was never shy to invent new languages by himself, even if they consisted just out of a few single names or terms ( old gondorian names like Bel, Agar or Udul are a good example just like Variag or Khand.) See: *Languages of the Men of the East *Haradrim Languages historical cultures and real-world languages Orcs and Trolls Sauron's Dominion Category:Lore Category:Cosmology